The cultural dynamics of German-Swiss literature may be conceived in terms of the following four basic forces: 1) The multilingualism of Switzerland; 2) The bilingualism of the German-Swiss region; 3) The internally disparate cultural tendencies caused by federalism and regionalism; 4) The external integration into a supranational language-culture leading to a very close yet strongly selective affiliation with one or more neighboring national states and their cultural life. It is the hypothesis of my theoretical framework that the peculiarities of German-Swiss literature rest on a highly differentiated interplay between these four basic forces.